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Hello everyone! I am baby33334. I used to be the caller for The Coalition - Singapore, or TCSG, from years 2013-2015. Along the way, I’ve played my fair share of tournaments in the past. Today, I want to discuss what happened over the Wargaming League Grand Finals in Poland that just happened this weekend. If you haven't heard of the WGL finals, look no further; the results of the whole tournament are available here. This article will only touch on EL Gaming’s matches, and perhaps attempt to make sense as to how and why EL Gaming lost so decisively and disastrously after a sterling performance to grab second place at the same tournament last year.
To start, I created two spreadsheets (RIP weekends) to show each tank selected by EL Gaming and their opponents. This includes who played what tank as well as the damage figures for each player and each tank. Do note that some games, specifically the first and sixth sets for EL Gaming vs NSS were not shown on stream and as a result there is no available data for those sets.
EL Gaming vs NSS
1.Too many autoloaders by EL Gaming.
In this best-of-nine series, we see major differences in tank selection for both teams. NSS preferred single-shot tanks, be it heavies or mediums. By contrast, EL Gaming brought at least 3-4 auto-loaders for every match. While that might not seem like much in a 15-man team such as Clan Wars or even random battles, 3-4 tanks in a team of seven is equal to or more than half of their team's Tier 10s. Interestingly, the autoloaders from EL gaming showed that they were unable to deal damage to have significant impact on the game,conventional wisdom suggests that autoloaders having much higher firepower than single-shot tanks;however, in all 4 games which the damage statistics were shown, the breech loading heavies from EL gaming did the most damage. An excellent article by my teammate, Haku, highlighted the differences in playstyle and handling of auto-loaders and single-shot tanks. To save ourselves some time, the TL;DR version in differences is that auto-loaders are great, but only when you can control the engagement, for example when a TVP 50/51 unloads its drum in 4.5 seconds and escapes safely. If you are unable to grab the game by the scruff of the neck and dictate the tempo, auto-loaders end up becoming a burden as you are effectively down a tank while it is reloading. Furthermore, careless play or bad RNG or both can strike at the most inopportune times, leaving a target just one shot away from being destroyed, unable to finish them off while the auto-loader drum is reloading, allowing the target to survive and deal damage towards your own team.
EL Gaming brought tanks such as the TVP 50/51 and Bat-Chat 25t (click the tanks for the role I am talking about or to learn more about them) for almost every game, intending to have them serve as flankers and to mop up any stragglers, which, to be fair the tanks are great at simply did not work with the exception of Set 2 where Newman did 3.5k damage, but even in that game the breech loading 113 played by black did more damage than the batchat consequently is the only set EL gaming won against NSS.
2.EL Gaming consistently brought lighter line ups than NSS did.
In all 6 sets that were played, EL's tanks simply did not have the staying power to fight heavy tanks or even single-shot mediums such as Object 140 and STB-1 (both of which have excellent hull-down characteristics). When it came to autoloaders, NSS brought out bigger, badder and scarier guns like the Waffentrager E100 and the AMX 50B which have more hit points than EL's TVPs and Bat-Chats. Personally, this is simply the difference in the meta between the Asia/APAC region and CIS region; the commentators, suggested that on city maps, like Ghost Town, two Tier 9 heavy tanks is better than one Tier 10 medium and one Tier 8 light tank. This led to the unfavourable engagements for EL Gaming and playing on the back-foot whenever NSS started to push.
3.Wrong use of artillery piece by EL Gaming.
EL Gaming used a Lorraine 155 51 self-propelled gun in 2 separate sets. Its main strength is that it has a (relatively) short aim time, reload speed, high accuracy and it's high top speed. However, the games in which EL Gaming used the artillery was either ineffective due to its lower alpha (in comparison to M40/43) or did not have the correct angles and was unable to reposition to get better shots. This, coupled with their inability to control the tempo, led to EL gaming to be effectively down a tank.*
*This is more of a minor point, as I think that the impact between the differences in artillery being used would have ultimately been inconsequential considering the difference in tank line up.
4.Map Selection.
EL Gaming are traditionally known for being very strong on open maps such as Prokhorovka, Murovanka and Cliff. At the same time, they are known for struggling to play on closed maps like Himmelsdorf, Ruinberg and Ghost Town. With the introduction of 7/68 format, the rules of map selection have changed yet again. This time maps are played once on attack, once on defence. This meant that EL Gaming were forced to play more unfavourable maps, but were unable to adapt to this in time. EL Gaming lost 4 games on maps where they were not good on (Mines and Ghost Town). Had they been stronger on these maps, the outcome could have been different.
EL Gaming vs Yato Gaming
If you are still reading this article, it means that you’ve probably expected some sort of detailed analysis up to this point. Unfortunately, EL Gaming’s match against Yato Gaming was so mind-boggling that I can summarise the match using a meme:
On a more serious note, EL Gaming is a more experienced and are arguably a better team than Yato. In addition to that, EL Gaming are more familiar with Yato Gaming being from the same region and having fought in 2014 and won 5:0 .The only logical conclusion that I could come up with to explain the 1:5 defeat was that EL Gaming was forced to play back-to-back matches (no thanks to the luck of the draw). As a result, they had around about 15 minutes to regroup after being defeated by NSS. While they do have massive experience playing at live events such as the APAC Finals for 3 seasons, Pacific Rumble, and last year’s Grand Final, each time they had a “break” because their opponents had a match in-between. This time, they had no time to recollect their thoughts and analyze what went wrong in the previous match so as to not repeat the same mistakes. Meanwhile their opponent were able to observe EL Gaming and make notes of every mistake and every movement that they made, waiting to exploit it against EL Gaming in the later series.
Conclusion
Sun Tzu once said that "Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." While EL Gaming has matured a lot in terms of their tactical play compared to their performance last year, playing with a slower tempo. EL Gaming’s detractors like to would point out that EL Gaming were simply outclassed by NSS. In my opinion, however, it is not as cut-and-dry. It is important to consider that tank selection also plays a part when it comes to winning a tournament series. The abysmal tank choices by EL Gaming certainly did not help them against NSS. I would say that EL Gaming has to improve their sense to have a better read of what kinds of tanks to bring and when to bring them in the future in order to defeat international teams like NSS and Na’Vi. The also showcased mental fragility when they routed so completely against Yato in a match where they were expected to win.
Despite the setbacks this season, I would not underestimate EL Gaming; in the past they frequently lost to Korean rivals ARETE (now renamed GOLD BASS) but showed resilience and were able to beat them in the final to clinch the first title for WGL-APAC, emphatically beating them 7-1. I believe that EL Gaming will take this humiliating performance to heart and learn from it, hopefully turning them to an even better team as they fight for the chance to represent Asia/APAC once again next season.
Edit: Here is a video made by my teammate Roby, he goes through the specifics of what went wrong while in this article I went through it in a general sense. I would highly recommend that you check it out.
Edited by baby33334, 11 April 2016 - 05:48 PM.
New physics too op for Applew0w :^))))
Wanted HellRaisers to win tbh, as they pulled it back so close, they really deserved it the title once again, hard fought battles vs NaVi..
The final with a batchat stuck in some unknown location on Cliff made me go................ [edited] 
